Online Reporter
Tomorrow, Zimbabwe and other African countries will commemorate Africa Day. Our Reporter DEBRA MATABVU spoke to the Dean of African Diplomatic Corps accredited to Zimbabwe, MR JAMES MUSONI, who is also Rwanda’s Ambassador to Zimbabwe, on the significance of the day in the wake of current geo-political tensions and evolving global power dynamics.
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Q: What does this year’s Africa Day mean for African countries in the current global economic and political climate?
A: Africa Day 2026 comes at a moment of extraordinary turbulence and extraordinary possibility.
Globally, we are witnessing a fracturing of the post-World War II multilateral order: Protectionist trade policies are re-emerging, geopolitical rivalries are intensifying and climate shocks are disproportionately punishing the Global South.
Yet Africa — this magnificent, resource-endowed, youthful continent — stands at a pivotal crossroads.
This year’s theme, proclaimed by the African Union (AU), “Assuring Sustainable Water Availability and Safe Sanitation Systems to Achieve the Goals of Agenda 2063”, is not accidental in its timing.
It speaks to the most fundamental of human dignities: the right to water.
In a world where over 400 million Africans still lack access to safe drinking water, this theme is our continent’s declaration that the time for half measures has expired.
In the current climate, Africa Day 2026 means three things above all others.
First, to commemorate the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (now the African Union) on May 25, 1963. It is a day dedicated to honouring the continent’s liberation from colonialism and apartheid, celebrating its rich cultural diversity and uniting to drive future socio-economic progress. Second, it is an act of continental solidarity — a reminder that our 55 nations are stronger as one African family than as 55 fragmented voices.
Third, it is a statement of developmental resolve — that Africa will pursue Agenda 2063 on its own terms, financed by its own resources, governed by its own institutions.
Q: What significance do Africa Day celebrations hold in reminding the continent about the ideals of Pan-Africanism and self-determination?
A: Africa Day commemorates the founding of the Organisation of African Unity in Addis Ababa in 1963, where the founding fathers were lighting a torch that said to a world that had colonised, enslaved and plundered our continent: We reclaim our sovereignty, our dignity and our destiny.
Pan-Africanism is not a relic of the past; rather, it is the operating system of our future. Every time an African nation negotiates a trade agreement under AfCFTA (African Continental Free Trade Area), that is Pan-Africanism in action.
Every time the African Union deploys peacekeepers to stabilise a conflict zone, that is Pan-Africanism in action. Every time an African scientist publishes research that benefits our continent’s health systems, that is Pan-Africanism in action.
Self-determination, in 2026, must be understood beyond political independence.
We are economically independent when we process our own raw materials. We are technologically self-determined when we build our own digital infrastructure. We are intellectually sovereign when we write our own history, in our own languages, through our own institutions.
Africa Day is, therefore, our annual recommitment to finishing the liberation project, because the struggle that began on the battlefield has not ended; it has simply moved to boardrooms, research laboratories, legislative chambers and international negotiating tables.
Q: How can African nations strengthen regional integration and intra-African trade under the African Union Agenda 2063 framework?
A: A market of 1,4 billion people is not a potential; it is a mandate. AfCFTA is perhaps the single most consequential instrument Africa has created since the founding of the OAU.
It is the largest free trade agreement on earth by number of participating nations.
And yet we trade more with Europe and Asia than we trade with each other.
Intra-African trade sits at approximately 15 percent of total African trade, compared to 60 percent within Europe and 58 percent within Asia.
This is not a natural condition; it is the residue of the colonial trade architecture that was deliberately designed to extract, not to circulate.
To strengthen regional integration under Agenda 2063, I advocate for five concrete imperatives.
First, we must dismantle non-tariff barriers — the bureaucratic bottlenecks, divergent standards and opaque customs procedures that make it easier for an African entrepreneur to export to Paris than to Accra.
Second, we must invest massively in intra-African infrastructure — roads, railways, energy grids and digital highways that connect our markets physically and virtually.
Third, we must harmonise our payment systems — accelerate the operationalisation of the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System so that intra-African transactions no longer route through foreign currencies.
Fourth, we must empower the African private sector — particularly women entrepreneurs and youth-led enterprises, as the true engine of intra-African trade.
Fifth, and critically, we must prioritise the free movement of African people across African borders. No free trade area reaches its potential when its people cannot move freely.
Q: In your view, what are the major opportunities and challenges facing Africa today?
A: Africa’s greatest resource is not beneath its soil; it walks on two legs and is under the age of 25.
Let me begin with the opportunities, because Africa’s challenges are well-documented; what is less told is our extraordinary promise.
Africa is home to 60 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land. The solution to global food insecurity grows in our soil.
We hold 30 percent of the world’s mineral reserves, including critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, coltan, upon which the entire global green energy transition depends.
We have a youth population that is the largest, most connected and most entrepreneurially ambitious in human history.
Our creative economy, including music, film, fashion, cuisine, is reshaping global culture.
And our biodiversity, from the Congo Basin rainforests to the Serengeti, is irreplaceable in the global effort to combat climate change.
The challenges, however, are real and they demand honesty. Governance deficits in some states continue to undermine investor confidence and deny citizens the dividends of sovereignty.
Debt burdens, much of them incurred at exploitative interest rates from external creditors, constrain our fiscal space.
Climate change is not a future threat for Africa; it is a present emergency. Conflict and instability in parts of our continent displace millions and erode decades of development.
And perhaps most insidiously, illicit financial flows drain an estimated US$89 billion from Africa every year, which are resources that belong to our people and must be reclaimed. The balance, however, is unmistakable: Africa’s opportunities far outweigh the continent’s challenges, provided we lead with courage, unity and the political will to govern for our people rather than for external audiences.
Q: Zimbabwe is hosting the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Summit this year. How can this platform be used to enhance peace, unity and economic cooperation among member states?
A: Allow me first to congratulate Zimbabwe on this honour. Hosting the COMESA Summit is a significant diplomatic and economic moment.
COMESA represents a market of over 640 million people and a combined GDP (gross domestic product) exceeding US$1 trillion. Its potential as a vehicle for peace, prosperity and industrialisation is immense.
To maximise this year’s hosting opportunity, I would recommend three specific thrusts.
First, to champion the acceleration of COMESA’s Free Trade Area to address practical barriers, including simplifying rules of origin, harmonising standards for agricultural and manufactured goods and eliminating import duties on intra-COMESA trade categories where disparities remain.
Second, to prioritise a COMESA peace and security compact that links economic integration explicitly to conflict prevention, because instability in one member state reverberates through the entire market.
Third, to use its hosting platform to advocate for a COMESA industrialisation agenda through leveraging the region’s mineral and agricultural resources to build domestic value chains rather than exporting raw materials.
Q: How can African diplomatic missions in Zimbabwe deepen cooperation with the country in areas such as trade, investment, education and tourism?
A: Diplomacy at its most powerful is not the exchange of notes between governments; it is the building of living bridges between economies, education, businesses and communities. And I believe we have only scratched the surface of what African missions in Zimbabwe can achieve together.
For example, in education, Rwanda and Zimbabwe have deepened academic linkages through university partnerships and teacher exchange programmes.
Q: Zimbabwe is bidding for the United Nations Security Council non-permanent seat for 2027-2028. What role does Zimbabwe play in promoting peace, security and regional cooperation?
A: Africa accounts for 65 percent of the UN Security Council’s agenda yet holds no permanent seat. This injustice must end. Zimbabwe’s bid for the United Nations Security Council non-permanent seat for the period 2027-2028 is not merely a national aspiration; rather, it is a continental statement.
Zimbabwe’s credentials for this responsibility are compelling.
This is a nation that has been a consistent voice for African solutions to African problems, from its active role in SADC’s peace and security architecture to its contributions to AU peacekeeping and mediation processes.
Q: How can the continent leverage its natural resources to benefit ordinary citizens and accelerate industrialisation?
A: Africa supplies 70 percent of the world’s coltan, 48 percent of its diamonds, 40 percent of its gold and vast reserves of the critical minerals driving the global green energy revolution such as lithium, cobalt, manganese, nickel.
Yet the African worker, the African farmer, the African mother drawing water from a borehole sees almost none of the wealth generated from these resources. This structural injustice is the unfinished business of our liberation.
The path to resource-led industrialisation requires a three-part revolution.
First, a processing revolution: Africa must impose and enforce beneficiation requirements that mandate the processing of minerals domestically before export.
Rwanda’s model of restricting raw mineral exports in favour of value-addition is instructive.
Zimbabwe’s own Minerals Amendment Act, which restricts the export of unprocessed lithium, is a bold and admirable step in this direction.
We must defend these policies courageously in the face of external pressure.
Second, a governance revolution: Natural resource revenues must be governed through transparent, accountable frameworks.
Third, a continental supply chain revolution: Under AfCFTA, Africa should build integrated continental industrial supply chains. This is what Asia did over three decades, transforming raw material dependence into industrial powerhouses. Africa can do it faster, because we have the AfCFTA framework, the resources and, critically, the youth workforce to make it happen.
Q: How can African countries position themselves to have a stronger voice in international institutions and global governance systems?
A: The architecture of global governance — the UN Security Council, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation — was designed in 1944 and 1945, largely without African participation, to serve a post-war world that no longer exists.
Africa in 2026 represents 1,4 billion people, the world’s youngest workforce and some of the fastest-growing economies on earth.
Yet we hold one IMF executive director seat out of 24.
We hold no permanent Security Council seat.
Our export interests are systematically underrepresented in WTO (World Trade Organisation) negotiations.
This structural exclusion is not a diplomatic inconvenience; it is a crisis of global legitimacy.
How do we change it?
First, through speaking with one African voice.
The AU’s Common African Position on global governance reform is our most powerful instrument, but it is only powerful if all 55 member states arrive at every international forum with that common position, without exception, without defection, without bilateral side deals that undermine continental solidarity.
Every time an African nation breaks ranks for short-term bilateral gain, we weaken our collective leverage.
Second, through building our own institutions.
The African Development Bank must be capitalised to finance African development.
